


echoes in the dead of dawn

by piggy09



Series: Shit, let's be spies [4]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, F/F, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-12 13:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5667892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teenage superspies Rachel and Sarah go on a rescue mission. Featuring:</p><p>*Tony Sawicki!<br/>*The Great British Bake-Off!<br/>*Emojis!<br/>*Arson!<br/>*Cursing in Ukrainian!<br/>*Violence!<br/>*Kissing!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. look across the great divide

**Author's Note:**

> ...it's been a while since I've updated this series, huh.
> 
> For those of you who don't want to read the other parts:  
> Everyone's a teenage spy! Rachel and Sarah are girlfriends! Helena and Sarah are sisters! Cosima works in a lab making gadgets! Alison works in the medical wing! There, you're caught up.
> 
> [warnings: violence, vomit, blood, abuse, reference to child abuse, dissociation]

Sarah’s phone buzzes with a text right before the building she’s standing outside of explodes.

It’s a pretty good explosion, as far as explosions go. Chunks of concrete sail across the street, burying themselves in the sidewalk. Glass shatters. The whole building ripples with orange-white heat, like the outline of some animal waking up from a slumber. The roar of rubble.

Sarah’s heart trips up, a little bit, but here’s why she hates herself today: it’s not actually because the building blew up.

She shifts her gun to her left hand, gives the perimeter a quick glance – still all clear, no scientists or guards – and checks her phone. It’s still so weird, doing this: like she’s any other teenage girl, instead of – well. A spy.

>Dunkin Donuts  
_Ur taking an unusually long tm._

>Unknown Number  
_so you spelled out unusually but not_

>Unknown Number  
_wait what is that_

>Unknown Number  
_team? tame? terminator? shit if youd just spelled it out i wouldve known_

>Dunkin Donuts  
_Stop._

>Unknown Number  
_nah_

Sarah’s just finished sending the last message when someone grabs her by the scruff of the neck and starts pulling her along. She’s about to lash out, break a bone, when she realizes she’s engulfed in a cloud of blonde hair and manages to flail her way free.

“Holy shit, Helena,” she gasps, “what the hell?”

“You were not paying attention,” Helena says cheerily, seemingly oblivious or uncaring about the smear of blood across her forehead. She smells like exploded building. “Too busy with your kissing and your smaller-than threes. Nasty.”

Sarah yanks herself out of her sister’s grip, keeps running. Her phone buzzes again and she’s distracted by that. Helena may have a point—

And Helena’s stolen her phone, bounces it between her fingers like a stolen hot potato. She clicks the button that opens the message, clucks her tongue in a scold against her teeth. _Tsk, tsk_. “Dirty,” she says sadly, and starts typing back a reply. Frowns. “Where are the emojis.”

“It’s a burner, meathead, give it _back_ ,” Sarah says, clawing at Helena’s hands as they move further and further from the scene of the crime. She ignores the flush on the back of her neck, even though she’s sure that whatever Rachel sent wasn’t – Jesus Christ – _dirty_.

“I have said not to call me this,” Helena says loftily, then sends the text and shoves the phone into the pocket of her jumpsuit. With that distraction gone she starts bounding ahead of Sarah, like a happy teenage murder puppy. There’s a motorbike left for them ten blocks from the target. Helena _loves_ motorbikes. If Helena could date a motorbike, she probably would.

Speaking of: Sarah really needs her phone back. The last time Helena managed to wrangle her way into one of Sarah’s text conversations, it ended with literal murder. She can’t go through that again. “Helena,” she gasps – Helena’s randomly decided to take a fire escape, is skipping along the roof, leaving Sarah to hoist herself up behind her – “can I get my _phone_ back, please.”

“No,” Helena says. She reaches into the pocket of her jumpsuit, pulls out Sarah’s phone, calmly sends another text as she hops around someone’s rooftop garden. Sarah’s relationship is ruined. Sarah’s _life_ is ruined. She closes her eyes, tightly – opens them in time to leap onto the next rooftop – closes them again in despair.

“I still have some of that chocolate from Switzerland left,” she says, loudly enough to reach the haystack-topped body bounding along before her. Helena skids to a stop, stares at her with wide eyes. “Yeah, the one with the bloody—” Sarah gestures vaguely, frustrated.

“Nibs,” Helena breathes, like it’s holy. She scrunches up her face, clearly torn; with an easy gesture she tosses the phone out of her jumpsuit and into the air before throwing it back and forth between her palms. It buzzes again. Sarah’s going to murder Helena herself. “Fine,” Helena says. “I will give you your phone back so you can make silly faces at it and hurt your texting thumbs. _But_ I am taking your chocolate.”

“Yeah, yeah, take the bloody chocolate,” Sarah says. She’s watching the phone hurl back and forth.

“Also,” Helena says, “you will not yell at me about _speed limits_ and _safe driving_.” She says the last five words like they’ve personally offended her. Sarah can picture her future: peeling between cars on the freeway so quickly and so close that it shreds the elbows off her jumpsuit. Also: vomiting. But before she can try to argue Helena’s thrown the phone at her, so hard it hits her in the chest. Then she’s gone, over the edge of the roof.

“Fine,” Sarah tells the empty air, and follows her.

* * *

>Dunkin Donuts  
_Y r u like this._

>Unknown Number  
_FISH DOVE KNIFE FROWNY FACE SKULL_

>Dunkin Donuts  
_Translate pls._

>Unknown Number  
_THERE ARE NO EMOJIS ON THIS PHONE. :(_

>Dunkin Donuts  
_Helena. Give Sarahs phone back._

>Dunkin Donuts  
_If either of u r dead I am going to kill u._

* * *

By the time the two of them get back to their apartment Sarah never wants to even _look_ at food again; she gives the bar of fancy Swiss chocolate to Helena with her blessing. Helena takes it, bumps her forehead into Sarah’s with a sort of violent love, and then retreats to her room to make sweet love to it or whatever the hell she does in there. Sarah takes an Alka-Seltzer, like an eighty year old woman. Then she heads off to HQ to report.

…on _foot_.

Maybe sensing that Sarah’s about ten seconds away from keeling over, the directors send her out of debrief early. She could head back – Helena’s been gunning for Sarah to watch the third Lilo and Stitch movie with her for weeks now – but instead she takes the elevator down a level, winds through the different hallways until she finds a door that looks like all the other doors. She stares at the door for a second. She should probably knock. Or. Something.

Instead she hacks the lock, because what’s the point of life if you don’t have fun.

The door whizzes open.

“You could have _knocked_ ,” Rachel says, sounding irritated and put-out.

Instead of answering, Sarah crosses the room and kisses her. Rachel makes an exaggerated sigh against Sarah’s lips but she can’t hold onto it for long; she kisses Sarah back, hand reaching up to settle in the curve of skin between Sarah’s chin and throat. Sarah feels the curve of fingers there, wonders when that started feeling like home.

Then Rachel breaks the kiss and says, sounding somewhere between curious and disgusted: “Your mouth tastes like vomit.”

Sarah makes a horrible ugly snort, sprawls across Rachel’s bed. “That’s the least romantic thing I’ve ever heard, and one time Cosima was tryin’ to make lasers and spent the whole week tellin’ us what temperature a man’s skull melts at.”

“And?” Rachel asks.

“What do you mean _and_ ,” Sarah says. “I don’t know, do I? Ask Cosima.”

“Approximately,” Rachel says. She sits on the bed next to Sarah until Sarah yanks her down; Rachel’s head lands on Sarah’s chest and she makes an irritated noise before settling there. Her body curls around Sarah’s instinctively and she starts fiddling with the bottom of Sarah’s shirt. It’s distracting.

“1400 degrees,” Sarah says. “There’s your bloody approximation.”

“Thank you,” Rachel murmurs. She brushes a kiss along Sarah’s collarbone. Her fingers have snuck under Sarah’s shirt; they splay warmly against her stomach, the heel of her hand over Sarah’s hipbone. “How was your trip, besides vomit-inducing.”

“Wasn’t even the mission,” Sarah says. “Helena drove us home. On a bike.”

“I’m impressed you’re alive,” Rachel says. “Are you going to receive a medal, for your bravery.”

“Is that _mockery_ , Rachel Duncan?” Sarah asks, feigning shock. “Shit, see if I ever bring you anything from a mission ever again.”

“Did you really _bring_ me something,” Rachel says, sounding amused. Sarah can’t see her face. She just gestures up and down the expanse of her body, a silent _ta-dah_. “I brought me, didn’t I?”

“Mm,” Rachel says, “and I’m of course very grateful.” She breathes the words against the column of Sarah’s throat, nips above Sarah’s pulse point.

“Really,” Sarah says faintly. “How grateful are you?”

* * *

They don’t leave Rachel’s room until the evening, the air outside HQ falling cool and blue on Sarah’s skin like cold water. Sarah looks more mussed than Rachel does, which is – unfair. Then again, Rachel changed clothes. Sarah’s still wearing yesterday’s jumpsuit, and she’s pretty sure there’s some vomit on it. Hot.

She manages to coax Rachel back to her apartment so Sarah can get a change of clothes, but she can’t get Rachel in any further than the hallway. Rachel and Helena have some sort of age-old rivalry that they won’t tell Sarah about. Well: Helena will tell Sarah about it, but only because she uses it as an excuse to tell Sarah a different story every time. She’s pretty damn sure Rachel didn’t _actually_ curse Helena and her descendents for a thousand years’ worth of misery.

..okay, _mostly_ sure.

Helena makes a noise that’s something like _bluh_ when Sarah enters the apartment. “You smell like sadness,” she calls from the couch. “Did you bring Rachel with you.”

“She’s outside,” Sarah says, not even bothering to deny it. “Please don’t fight my g—” she makes a sort of horrible gargling sound, for a moment, and then manages to get her conversational train back on its track. “Don’t fight her, or I’m takin’ the chocolate back.”

“It is already gone,” Helena says sadly. On the television screen, someone ices a cake while dramatic music plays. Sarah’s pretty sure it’s some sort of food competition show, but hell if she’s going to ask. Instead she heads towards her bedroom, shucking the jumpsuit as she goes.

“I am leaving tomorrow,” Helena calls out, followed by something muttered in Ukrainian at the television. Sarah catches _shit_ , which is one of thirteen Ukrainian words she knows.

“Already?” Sarah calls back as she yanks on a pair of jeans.

“Something is broken,” Helena says. “I am going to break it more.” She chuckles a little, down in the pit of her throat, then makes a sort of _euh_ noise. “Like this cake. It is not _cooked_ , Sarah. It is a sad lump of dough. Like Rachel.”

Sarah ignores that, pulls on a shirt and grabs her jacket as she heads back out. “Hey,” she says, hovering awkwardly by the couch. “Good luck, okay? Don’t – die, or anythin’.”

Helena looks up from the television, her eyes unexpectedly soft. Sometimes Sarah thinks stupid sharp little things, like: when has anyone ever told Helena _be safe, come home, I want you to be okay._ She doesn’t like thinking stuff like that – just makes her sad, and that makes Helena sad, and then they’re both sad and half the food in the apartment vanishes and they burn through another five episodes of the Lilo and Stitch TV show.

“Okay, Sarah,” Helena says, lip wavering a little. “Okay.”

* * *

The mission is supposed to take twenty-four hours or less.

Two weeks pass. Helena doesn’t come home.

* * *

Tony Sawicki falls to the ground with a sad noise of pain and Sarah hops back and forth in place, hoping that he gets back up. The gym’s empty except the two of them – Sarah’s been in here for three hours, punching anything and anyone that stands still long enough for her to hit it. In the back of her head the counter rolls over. Fifteen days, six hours. Remembering that makes energy sizzle along her nerves again and she snaps, “Come on, arsehole, get up,” at the visiting agent on the ground.

“Fuck that,” Tony says emphatically. His voice is nasally – Sarah might have broke his nose. “You—” and he points at Sarah firmly “need yoga or something, sis.”

“Yoga’s shite,” Sarah says with the automatic speed of someone who’s been Alison’s friend for longer than a week. “Know what’s better than yoga? Violence.” She keeps hopping, fists still up. It’s not making her feel better. She bounces faster. Maybe she’ll go for a run. Maybe she’ll go break into a secure facility. Who knows.

Tony struggles to a sitting position, but stops before Sarah can get her hopes up for imminent violence. He holds out his hands placatingly. “Look, Sarah, I’m not gonna fight you,” he says. “I get it, you’re freaked. Hell, I’d be—”

“I’m fine,” Sarah says automatically. Tony gives her an incredibly unimpressed look, wipes blood out from under his nose with the back of his hand and makes a gross snort to get the rest of it sucked further up his nose. When he keeps talking, his voice is marginally less nasally.

“I’ve seen fine, Sar,” he says, “and right now you’re in a different friggin’ country.”

Abruptly Sarah’s energy floods out of her and she collapses on the ground next to him. They sit next to each other for a second before Sarah sighs: “She’s just _gone_ , Tony, and I don’t know what to do.”

“You asked your boss?” Tony asks, giving a quick nod of gratitude as Sarah passes him medspray. He sticks it right up his nose, and Sarah goes _ew_ without helping it. Tony winks.

“Yeah,” Sarah mutters. “Gave me some shite about _unexpected delays_ and _perfectly confident_ and _dedicated agent_ and – _nothing_ , just…” she trails off, looks down at her lap. Her hands are in fists. She unclenches them.

Tony yanks the medspray out of his nose, frowns at its surface, looks guiltily at Sarah, and then chucks the spray across the room. It bounces against the wall, lands perfectly in the trash can. “Go after her, then,” he says, like it’s obvious.

“HR’d skin me,” Sarah says, which isn’t a _no_. Or a denial that she’s been thinking about it, ever since the clock rolled over to six days.

“Shit, girl, one time I let a civ into the base I was stationed at and they didn’t skin me,” Tony says lazily. “One time that asshole Paul _blew up_ his base and they didn’t skin _him_.”

“Plus,” he says, tongue poking between his teeth as he grins, “I wanna see everyone freak when they realize you just _ditched_ ‘em.”

“Twat,” Sarah says fondly. Then she frowns, stares at her folded hands. _Be safe, come home, I want you to be okay_. She knows the coordinates of Helena’s last mission. She could wait for them to notice Helena’s gone, wait for the red tape to clear, wait for a team to be assembled and hope that she’s on it. But nobody here’s as good as her. Nobody’s invested as her.

(And underneath that is this: maybe the director would say, _well, she was never our agent anyways. She always belonged to the people who made her. Maybe it's best to just let her go_.)

“Uh oh,” Tony says, “I know that face.”

“What _face_ ,” Sarah says. Tony barks a laugh. “You’re gonna do some dangerous shit,” he says proudly. He stands up, gives a grimace at the blood on his jumpsuit. “If anyone asks,” he says, offering a hand to help Sarah up – she takes it – “you didn’t hear anything from me. I wasn’t even _here_ , got it?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sarah mutters distractedly. She’s thinking. Tony claps her on the back, and saunters out the door.

* * *

When Sarah walks in the door of the lab, trailing anger and determination behind her like a storm cloud, she’s almost hit in the face with a dart. Thankfully she catches it, but: still. “Oi,” she says, forgetting for a moment that she’s charging out into the wilds to die. “The hell?”

“Sorry!” calls a voice from somewhere in a large pile of circuitry and what looks like nine separate disemboweled Gamecubes. “Sorry, sorry, it’s rigged up to try and – uh, murder you, Scott and I have a bet going that someday your reflexes aren’t going to catch up and I’m going to be able to hit you and—”

Cosima’s head pops up over the junk heap. Her eyes are distorted by her goggles, giving her a permanent look of surprise. “Oh, hey, Sarah,” she says. “What’s up?”

“Well I’m not dead,” Sarah says, flipping the dart over and over in her hand. It looks like it’s made of gum wrappers and hope, which doesn’t surprise her. “I need the good shit, Cos.”

“Excuse me,” Cosima says as she hops her way out of the pile, “ _everything_ I make is the good shit, thanks.” She picks a circuit out of her hair, frowns at it, tosses it back into the junk heap. “What kind of good shit?”

“I’m goin’ after Helena,” Sarah says bluntly.

“Oh,” says Cosima, blinking wildly. She shoves the goggles back up over her forehead, squints at Sarah before she manages to fumble her glasses out of her pocket and back onto her face. “You told Alison that?”

“Don’t want to die,” Sarah says, giving the dart a significant look, “so no.”

“She’s gonna kick your ass.”

“Yeah, well,” Sarah mutters vaguely, shifts from foot to foot uncomfortably. _Be safe, come home, I want you to be okay_. Alison’ll probably try to make her stay; Alison believes in the structure of this place, bureaucracy-bones. Sarah – doesn’t.

She’s interrupted from her melancholy by a backpack being shoved at her. It’s featherlight when Sarah lifts it, a sleek matte black that looks—

“This bulletproof?” she says, flipping it over in her hands.

“ _Yeah_ it’s bulletproof,” Cosima says, torn somewhere between _duh_ and her excitement over her own genius. “Also it inflates into a raft if you pull—” she points with a ring-covered finger “ _that_ tab, and you can unfold it and wear it as a jacket, and – I don’t know, it was like 3am when I made this thing. It might also turn into a robot.”

“You’ve been holdin’ out on me,” Sarah breathes in awe.

Cosima shrugs. “You didn’t earn it.”

“Bitch,” Sarah says with the air of ritual, and Cosima replies “Bitch” as she heads back into the lab. She comes back with an armful of various junk, starts speedily shoving it into different pockets of the backpack. “So that’s, uh, hella rations, a couple guns, sleeping bag, more jumpsuits, lasers—”

“You got lasers working,” Sarah says, impressed.

“—rope, and bombs. The bombs are new, they’re the _shit_.” Cosima grins devilishly at the bag, then shoves it at Sarah. It’s still light, almost eerily so. God bless Cosima and everything she stands for. They smile at each other for a second, as Sarah tries to figure out to do with the words _thank you_ settling in her throat. Push them up? Swallow them down?

But she’s distracted from that dilemma when she looks up, looks at Cosima’s face. Cosima looks solemn – uncharacteristically so, for Cosima.

“Hey, Sarah?” Cosima asks, voice cracking the smallest bit. “Come back, okay?”

_Be safe, come home, I want you to—_

“You’re, like, the only friend I have here,” Cosima says, fidgeting back and forth, “’cause Beth’s doing that – undercover shit, and Alison would, like, disown me if you didn’t come back. So – come back, because I don’t—” her voice cracks again, shattering under her own honesty, “I don’t want to have to do this alone.”

Sarah hugs her. What else could she do? Cosima’s chin digs sharply into her shoulder, and she tells herself that neither of them are crying.

“’Course I’m gonna come back,” Sarah says lightly, slinging the backpack on. It presses tight against her back. Probably magnets or something, Sarah doesn’t even know.

“Okay,” Cosima says, nodding. “Okay.” She seems to be trying to convince herself. She looks at Sarah like she wants to say something else, then she turns on her heel and buries herself in her pile of gears and circuits.

Sarah takes that for the cue it is, and leaves.

* * *

Rachel wakes up at 1:22am to the sound of someone knocking on the door.

“Hey,” Sarah says when Rachel opens it. “I’m goin’ to get my sister. You coming?”

* * *

They steal a helicopter. (“ _Borrowing_.” “Is it _really_ borrowing if the organization hasn’t been informed you’re borrowing it?” “I mean—” “And are you planning on giving it _back_.” “…shut up.”) They bicker briefly over who’s going to fly it, but since Sarah knows where they’re going she prevails. Rachel sits in the other seat, goes through her bag methodically to catalogue. She hopes she’s brought enough knives. Sarah didn’t exactly give her a lot of time to pack.

 _Why now_ , she wants to ask, but the helicopter’s roaring and Sarah’s hands are white on the controls and Rachel thinks she doesn’t really want to know. She’s just – glad, uncomfortably so, that Sarah asked. If Sarah had left without her Rachel would have nothing. She’s acquainted with Sarah’s friends but not enough for their friendship to continue without Sarah. It would just be her, again: alone.

She looks out at the night sky below them, dark and black and empty as a deep-sea chasm, and tries not to dwell on it. The helicopter touches down and Sarah throws herself out of it, pulling her helmet off and shaking out her hair like a wet dog. “Come on,” she says. “It’s a few miles this way.”

She heads off, intent with purpose as a hunting hound. Rachel follows obligingly, tries to ignore the klaxon in the back of her brain screaming: _you aren’t following protocol, report back, follow procedure, report back, you’re breaking the rules, report back, report back, report back._ A headache is forming between her eyes, slithering around her temples. Report back, report back, report back. Like a drumbeat in her skull. Like a glitch, in the code of her.

“You alright?” Sarah asks, pivoting on one foot when she realizes Rachel’s fallen behind. She sways on the balls of her feet, and Rachel takes her pain and folds it into smaller and smaller squares until it’s gone. _I’m protecting a valuable asset to the organization_ , she tells herself, and: _if I can’t keep up she’ll keep going, and if she keeps going on her own she won’t survive_. It’s enough to push the pain back. For now.

“Apologies,” she says quietly, quickening her pace so she keeps up. The two of them move like knives through the skin of the world. Rachel stays silent, tries to crush the fervent desire for a universe where Sarah would leave Helena behind.

“Seriously,” Sarah says, “you alright? Don’t want to lose you too.” In the dark Rachel can’t quite read her face, but she gambles on concern.

“Slightly disconcerted,” she says quietly, “but I’ll recover.”

“Shit,” Sarah says in a great gust of breath. Her hand runs through her hair; her whole posture wilts for a moment before she returns to herself. “Sorry. I just – I dunno. I only decided to leave a few hours ago, yeah? Kind of last minute.”

Unsaid: _I didn’t want to leave you behind_. Rachel thinks _shut up_ viciously at the way her chest feels warm. She doesn’t say anything; instead she reaches between them and links Sarah’s hand with hers. Squeezes, once, moves to drop it. But Sarah doesn’t let go. She isn’t looking in Rachel’s direction, but she also isn’t letting go.

“Almost there,” Sarah says, almost as a sort of apology. “Maybe a half-mile or so.”

 _You don’t have to apologize_ , Rachel thinks, _for wanting this_. But she doesn’t say it, just keeps her fingers tangled with Sarah’s and keeps walking. Above them the sky hangs, laden heavy with stars like new fruit. It’s so quiet. Somewhere, an owl lets out a soft cry.

“There it is,” Sarah says, and skids to a stop.

“Well,” Rachel says, “it seems Helena was here after all.”

Where the facility should be, there is only a pile of ash.


	2. soon they're gonna hear

It smells like death down here. Rachel’s used to the smell – knows it in all its permutations, natural rot and the spray of blood from arteries and drowning victims and those who die of poison with froth on their lips.

Here, it just smells like fire. Rachel crushes a bone under the heel of her stiletto, vindictively.

“Do you know what this facility _is_ ,” she says.

Sarah, on the other side of a charred wall, sighs loud enough for Rachel to hear. “No,” she says. “Helena just said somethin’ about breaking shit. Shit looks broken to me.”

She kicks a wall, frustrated. It makes an ominous creak. Rachel pokes the detritus with her toe, yields a pattern of tiles underneath.

“Some sort of laboratory?” she muses, only partially to Sarah. She regrets that Sarah hadn’t stolen Helena’s briefing, but she’s not going to say that out loud. Sarah doesn’t need more guilt on her shoulders.

“Yeah, maybe,” Sarah mutters. She paces back into the room Rachel’s standing in, eyes the square of tile with a sour expression. Sighs, shakes her head. “Shite.”

There might be some sort of clue in the rubble, but Rachel has never been that sort of spy. Obinger could do it, maybe. Not her. Instead she keeps sweeping off ash from the floor with the side of her foot, like it’ll make a difference.

Her shoe catches on a tile, slightly higher than the others. And another and another and another, all in a row.

“Sarah,” Rachel says quietly before crouching down and running her fingers along what is definitely a seam. (She’d worry about her manicure, if Cosima hadn’t taken care of that for her. Bless her and everything she stands for.) Sarah leans over the floor, watches in silence as Rachel uncovers an ever-so-slightly open trap door.

“Shite,” Sarah says again, with feeling.

“Oh, yes,” Rachel says. “I agree.”

* * *

Thankfully Sarah has rope in her backpack – very smooth, made of some sort of metal, possibly magnetic. It holds both of their weight just fine. Then they’re down in a basement, dark and smelling faintly of fire and strongly of fear. Sarah fumbles along the wall, finds a light switch. Lights flicker on one after the other, fluorescent and humming. The sound vibrates against Rachel’s skull, an irritating whine. Her headache returns.

It’s a sparse facility, and what exists in the room has been thoroughly smashed. The torn fragments of notes litter the ground. One flutters by, disturbed by the gust of the open trapdoor; Rachel reads _conditioning_ and _subject_ and then it’s gone. She’s starting to get an unpleasant feeling. Her head – _hurts_ , so loud she can’t focus. She looks at Sarah instead of thinking. Sarah’s moving through the room like a patch of smoke come hours too late, treading near-soundlessly in her boots. She’s moving in a daze towards the object at the other end of the room.

It’s a cage. About the size for a dog, Rachel’s brain murmurs unhelpfully, but not a _large_ dog.

The cage is bolted to the floor, but it’s dented on the sides with great force. Sarah lifts a foot, gingerly slides it into one of the indent. It fits perfectly. Sarah looks at Rachel; her eyes are filled with a sort of ageless grief.

_Conditioning. Subject._

Rachel feels bile rising in her throat. She doesn’t remember the last time she threw up, if she’s ever thrown up. Memory brushes against her brain, fleeting, but then like always it’s gone. It’s easier to just forget; trying to remember only hurts, the space where memories should be raw and aching and open. So she doesn’t try to remember, and she very firmly does not throw up.

“She was here,” she says instead. Stating the obvious – but it fills it, at least a little, that horrible hungry silence.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “How many times.” They look at each other, and Rachel wants to ask if Sarah feels it – the way the room is pressing down, familiar in a way she can’t quite articulate. The cage, the cage, surely she can feel the way it’s breathing. Like scalpels on your—

 

 

 

“ _Hey_ ,” Sarah says, her voice loud. She’s said it before, that much is clear. For one thing: she wasn’t this close a few moments ago, standing in front of Rachel like an apparition. Like everything Rachel’s never known how to want.

“Yes,” Rachel says dazedly. She lets Sarah grab her arm (don’t _touch_ but it’s Sarah don’t _touch_ but she doesn’t quite remember why not don’t _touch_ but) (but) and pull her to the rope. Once she gets there muscle memory takes over, and she pulls herself up until they’re back in the ashes of the building proper. There’s something comforting about being here, like overhearing a song you knew by heart when you were young. The smell of ash, settling in her nose.

Sarah climbs up the rope after her and sits down on the ground in one sudden cut-strings collapse. Rachel follows, sits and stares numbly at the wreckage of the fire. She can hear shuffling and then Sarah’s there, sitting next to her, her head falling on Rachel’s shoulder. Rachel reaches an arm up – uncomfortably – and tangles her fingers in Sarah’s hair. _You are here_ , she thinks, _and I am here, and this is real, and this is all there is_. To Sarah’s left the sun is rising; it burns the building in red and gold, all over again. This is all there is, this nest of ash. Nothing came before this – at least, nothing that Rachel can remember.

“I didn’t ask,” Sarah says, numbly. “What happened to her, I didn’t ask.”

“I doubt she’d want you to know,” says Rachel, feeling the words somewhere in her chest like a sharp knife. If it was _her_ , she wouldn’t want anyone to know. She’d carry that secret between her ribs. Somewhere no one could reach it.

Instead of answering Sarah moves her hand, fast, in a blur of silver. A knife thuds into a burned-down wall, sends pieces of ash skittering down to the ground. It’s definitely Rachel’s knife. She hadn’t noticed it leave her pocket. On any other day she’d be impressed.

“There’ll be answers down there,” she says quietly, “of some sort. Where she went. Who—” and she stops, torn between — _did this to her_ and _—took her_. Maybe she wasn’t even taken. Maybe she just – left. Saw the person that she was and ran from her, ran from everything else.

A question: would Rachel?

She’s thinking about it, in that horrible horrible silence, when Sarah’s phone buzzes. Sarah jumps; Rachel only barely manages not to. She gives Sarah a look: _really_.

“I thought maybe she’d—” Sarah says helplessly, shrugs as she sits up. She rummages in her jumpsuit pockets, pulls out her phone. Her actual phone, not a burner. _Really_. Sarah gives Rachel a flat look, unlocks her phone.

Frowns.

“Look at this,” she says. Rachel leans over her phone, looks.

>Unknown Number  
_4950308024495789_

Sarah’s eyes flick over the message, breaking it down. Rachel does the same – addresses? phone numbers? “You don’t have any sort of numerical code,” she says, “do you?”

“Yeah, no, that’s Cosima’s thing,” Sarah says, looking vaguely horrified at the idea. “I don’t – I _know_ it’s not a bloody coincidence.” Her voice shakes, straining desperately towards belief. “I don’t know what it _means_ , though. Bloody riddle, innit?”

Rachel’s mind hums efficiently, spitting out combinations. Pieces click into place. “Coordinates,” she says distantly, already reaching for her phone. It’s also, embarrassingly, not a burner; she’s able to input latitude, longitude, bring it up on the maps application. (Abandoned scientific facilities have surprisingly excellent cellular service.) She holds the screen up to Sarah.

“Ukraine,” Sarah says in a sort of numb daze.

“Ukraine,” Rachel says in agreement. Above them the sun has finished rising; it gilds Sarah’s hair a horrible, horrible gold.

* * *

Rachel makes this _face_ when Sarah brings up the idea of going back to the helicopter. And, fine: Sarah knew it was a stupid idea, but she’s not exactly firing on all cylinders right now. That room, that horrible room: it felt like Helena, the way Helena gets – got – the way – the way she’d go still, when you asked her anything about her past. Sarah could see Helena’s bones in the angles of that cage, and hated it because of that. You held her, she thought, wanting to kick it the same way Helena had. You didn’t let her go.

Here is another thought she had, while in that lab: _it’s my fault_.

She and Rachel sit in that building for hours, while the sun comes up, and numbly eat one of the tiny little ration bars Cosima had thrown in the bag. (Cosima had called it _lembas_ , Sarah remembers, and she doesn’t know why that thought makes her feel so sick.) One of them should probably say _let’s move on_. One of them should have a plan. But Sarah’s off-balance and Rachel hasn’t looked right since they went down there; she looks unfinished, a sketch of a human being. A girl someone started drawing, and then tried to erase. Smudged.

So they just sit there, wasting time. Fifteen days, eighteen hours.

“We need to steal a helicopter,” Sarah says numbly. Above them the sky is so blue, so bright that it feels violent. She wants rain clouds. She doesn’t want this, the way it feels like an attack.

Next to her Rachel blinks in that way that means that she’s startled but refuses to jump. “I suppose we can’t drive to Ukraine,” she says. Her voice is a dry rasp, underused.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Helicopter.”

They stare off into the distance, for a moment, into that horrible blue sky.

“We need to sleep, first,” Rachel says distantly. “We’ll be useless otherwise.”

Sarah has to physically swallow down the urge to shout _no_. No, no, we have to keep going, we have to find her. But Rachel’s right. Of course she is. If they don’t sleep they won’t be able to do anything.

_Useless_. What a way to frame it. Like they’re weapons on a shelf. Meant for a purpose.

“Fine,” Sarah says. “Where.”

“I don’t know,” Rachel says. Each word is deliberately sharp, slicing Sarah’s ears. She winces involuntarily. Then she nudges her backpack with one shoulder. “There’s a sleeping bag in this,” she says, “if we get far away from this shitshow we can just…” and she trails off. The best chance of shelter all around is in the basement. But there’s no way in hell she’s going back there.

Rachel sighs, stands. Her bones crack as she stretches, lazy as a cat. Sarah watches the flex of Rachel’s muscles and feels love like a kick drum in her chest, feels abruptly guilty for that. She takes Rachel’s hand, when Rachel offers it, and lets Rachel pull her to standing. There’s ash all over her back, the tops of her legs. Doesn’t matter. She’ll smell it for weeks anyways.

They walk in silence for a mile or two, out into the rolling green hills. Sarah can’t help thinking about the walk the night before, Rachel’s hand in hers, the thought that over the hill there would be some sort of answer. That maybe if she walked over the peak she’d find Helena, sitting in the facility and waiting for Sarah with that same toothy grin. Stupid of her, to think that.

They walk until they don’t. Sarah drops the bag, pulls out the sleeping bag. She’s too tired to say anything, too tired to get out of her jumpsuit or weakly offer to sleep on the ground. The two of them squeeze into it and Sarah buries her head into Rachel’s breastbone, like she could be safe there. Rachel’s hand tucks itself along her forearm and the two of them lie there and breathe. Rachel’s still awake, Sarah knows. But she doesn’t try to say anything. Neither of them do.

They stay like that, breathing, pulled tight together – two victims of someone else’s tragedy. It doesn’t take Sarah long to fall asleep.

* * *

When she wakes Rachel’s still there, fingers trailing absentmindedly up and down the line of Sarah’s inner arm. For a second, Sarah forgets where she is – thinks she’s back in her apartment, the two of them lying in her bed, sunlight falling golden through the window. In a minute they’ll get up and Rachel will manage to make breakfast out of all the shit she and Helena keep in the kitchen. But for now—

Remembering is like a splash of cold water. Sarah jumps, despite herself. Rachel’s fingers stop moving and Sarah can’t think of a way to say: _don’t stop, please, I just want you to_

“Sarah,” Rachel says, voice sleep-husky and Sarah wants so much right now – so many things she can’t let herself want. “It’s Rachel. You’re with me. We’re going after your sister, do you remember?”

“I know where I am,” Sarah says, and climbs out of the sleeping bag before she forgets how to leave. Outside the air is bitterly cold. The sun’s going down. _Shit_. “I just—” She laughs, weakly. “I just know where I am. That’s all.”

Behind her she can hear the sound of Rachel getting out of the sleeping bag, silent. She wants Rachel to find a way to fill the silence – but also if Rachel says anything, Sarah will bite her head off. She can feel it, in her teeth. So she just watches the sunset bleed over the horizon and gives Rachel a nod of thanks when Rachel hands her the folded-up sleeping bag. She slings her backpack over her shoulders and then they’re off again, headed in the opposite direction of the sunset. Over the damn hills.

Sarah says it first: “Where the hell are we gonna get a helicopter.”

“There’s an outpost in a city near here,” Rachel says quietly. “We could report back.” Sarah frowns at her, wishing Rachel’s soft little words didn’t make her feel so betrayed. Of course that’s not an option. They’re not stopping _now_.

“Or we could just break in,” she says bitterly.

“Or we could just break in,” Rachel agrees, voice almost a sing-song as it echoes Sarah’s tone. She tilts her head to the side, considering. “I’m sure we _could_.”

“Yeah,” Sarah mutters, already breaking down blueprints in her mind. “They’re all built on the same layout, yeah? We’d need the northwest side—”

“—break in through the outer door—”

“—security cameras? Do we care—”

“—We can obscure our faces, it doesn’t matter. They’re not going to be very pleased with us, Sarah.”

“Does it look like,” Sarah says with her voice gone tight, “I give a shit. They’ve got my _sister_ , Rachel. I’m not waiting for bloody _protocol_.”

She stares at Rachel, feels the way her gaze is made of bullets. Either you’re with me, or you’re against me. Rachel stares back at her, in that _way_ she has – like Sarah’s something curious that she’s going to get bored with, soon. Like everything is just an experiment.

But she nods. So that’s something.

* * *

There’s something so familiar about it, breaking in someplace with Rachel. It’s so good to have someone at your back when you’re breaking into a secret high-tech spy agency base in order to steal a large and conspicuous vehicle. Especially if that someone’s _Rachel_ , who moves like she’s made of knives.

They use one of Cosima’s lasers on the door and then they’re in. The hangar is empty, dark in the heavy twilight. Planes and helicopters loom over them like old ghosts.

“Too big,” Sarah mutters, staring at all the hulking jets. (Sixteen days, six hours.) Behind her Rachel’s moving silently in and out of patches of moonlight, trailing her hand over the side of one of the planes. The silver of her fingernails gleams as she presses her fingers to the metal skin. Like to like. She looks vaguely ill, again.

“Come on,” Sarah says, snagging Rachel’s hand off the plane and pulling her along. It’s cold, Rachel’s hand. So cold. What is _up_ with her, Sarah wonders. They keep moving through the cold silent alleyways, the only point of warmth their joined hands.

“Sorry,” Rachel says, voice sounding strained. “Headache.”

“Take an Advil,” Sarah says, hoping the tone of her voice masks her concern – and also her frustration. Of all the times for Rachel to get a bloody _headache_. But they keep moving, past commercial jets and fighter planes and a couple enormous helicopters. Sarah wonders how long ago they tripped some silent alarm, how much time they have.

She skids to a halt. “So,” she says, looking at the shape in front of them. “Thoughts?”

“Absolutely not,” Rachel says, but when Sarah tugs them towards the private plane she sighs in a put-upon sort of way and follows.

* * *

“Can’t believe you know how to fly this thing,” Sarah says, ripping her way through a package of complimentary peanuts. They’re barely even the same species as the peanuts she got the _last_ time she was on a plane – they’re like tiny golden pieces of sunshine between her teeth. She’s filing a complaint when she gets back.

They. When _they_ get back.

Rachel shrugs a shoulder loosely, keeps her hands on the controls. They’re winging east, the two of them in their private plane. Sarah doesn’t even know where you learn to fly a plane. Are there lessons for that? Did Rachel take them? What does she even _know_ , about Rachel?

She drops into the co-pilot’s chair, rotates back and forth in it loosely. Eats more peanuts. She wishes they’d run into someone in the hangar, so she could’ve fought them. She feels itchy, urgent with energy. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re just _sitting_ here and there’s nothing she can do. Helena could be in another cage right now—

“Where’d you learn to fly, anyway,” she blurts, spinning in increasingly frantic half-circles.

“I don’t recall,” Rachel says distantly. She flicks some switches, presses a button with a frown of concentration and turns away from the controls. “My training was very rigorous, it’s almost entirely a blur.”

“Comforting,” Sarah mutters.

Rachel raises her eyebrows. “I’m capable of flying the _plane_ , Sarah. If I wasn’t I would have stopped you trying to take it—” She stops, presses her index and middle fingers hard into her temple.

“What is wrong with your bloody _head_ ,” Sarah says with a sort of terrible fascination. She’s never seen Rachel get a headache, or a stomachache. Hell, she’s never even seen Rachel get sick. To see her like this, pale and sweating and obviously in pain, is just another horrible wrong thing. Like an eclipse, a dark circle in the sky where the sun should be. Only the sun’s already gone – vanished somewhere into the woods of East Europe. She doesn’t even know how to quantify the wrongness of _this_.

“I don’t. _Know_ ,” Rachel hisses. “The longer we stay away, the more rules we break, the worse it gets.”

“I’m not turning back,” Sarah says instantly. “No way.”

“I know that,” Rachel says – aiming for soothing, missing it by a mile. “You asked what the problem is, I told you. That’s all.”

“Can you fly?” Sarah asks suddenly, filled with a rollercoaster-drop of sick fear.

“It’s on autopilot,” Rachel says. “It will be for – oh, a few hours. I’ll be fine.” She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself, and is failing miserably.

“Like hell,” Sarah says; she stands up from the chair, pulls Rachel out of hers. Rachel leans on her slightly. The headache must be worse than she’s willing to admit. They stumble through the cabin to the back bedroom and Sarah dumps Rachel on the bed, watching Rachel raise her eyebrows at her with a sort of lazy amusement. Her eyelids flutter closed, and Sarah watches the slight trembling of her eyelashes with something tender blooming in her chest.

“Is this more or less romantic than the vomit,” Rachel says, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“Less,” Sarah says immediately, for the sake of her pride.

“Oh, excellent,” Rachel says, losing her words increasingly to a sort of tired slur. “I’m thrilled we’re setting records.” By the time Sarah thinks to ask Rachel what that sentence even means, Rachel’s breathing has evened out: she’s asleep.

* * *

_Report back report back report back report back report back_ I’m telling you, it’s not going to _report back report back report back_ you can’t take her away from _report back report back report back_ Rachel can you hear _report back report back report back_ can’t you see she’s in pain? _report back report back report back report back report back report back report back report back report back report back report back report back report_

* * *

Rachel wakes up, leans over the side of the bed and dry heaves pathetically. It’s possibly time to consider the fact that something is very, very wrong with her. What if – hypothetically – she isn’t actually sick? _Conditioning, subject_. What _if—_

And there, she’s considered it. No need to continue. She shuts her eyes tightly, opens them and stares at the ceiling of the plane. It’s 9:16pm. They’ll be landing in approximately thirty minutes. She really need to stand up now. If she doesn’t, the plane will crash.

With that logic held between her teeth, Rachel sits up. Rests her head in her hands. Her skull is too tight. She thinks she _dreamed_ , which knocks her even further off-kilter. Someone tall, who smelled like tea and anxious cigarettes. _Rachel, can you hear me?_ She pinches the bridge of her nose, tight, grabs her bag and rummages for a change of clothes. There’s a shower in the back. It’ll fix things.

Hopefully.

* * *

When she pads into the cockpit Sarah’s asleep, curled into the co-pilot’s chair in a tight, miserable huddle. Love unfolds in Rachel’s chest like soft wings. She wishes this wasn’t what it was – that it was instead the two of them, in a plane bound nowhere particularly important. There’s a bottle of champagne in the galley. The sun will rise again, soon, paint Sarah gold. But. This isn’t that – it’s a rescue mission, a desperate one. Sarah’s only asleep because she’s been running herself ragged. It’s unfortunate.

Rachel takes the other chair, turns off autopilot and puts her hands on the controls. Next to her Sarah stirs, wakes up. Her eyes are lidded with sleep. Rachel thinks of telling her she’s beautiful, but she doesn’t think now is the time.

“Feel better?” Sarah asks, voice a sad croak. Rachel unfocuses her eyes, lets herself acknowledge her own pain. Her left ring finger twitches on the control, and then she lets it go.

“Yes,” she lies.

“Yeah, that’s a load of shit,” Sarah says bluntly, smearing her hands down her face in some sort of desperate attempt to wake herself up. She looks a mess, sleep-rumpled. Her hair is one great snarl.

“I love you,” Rachel says, surprised at how quick the words leave her mouth. “You do know that, don’t you?”

Sarah peeks out between her fingers, frowns at her. “Yeah,” she says, “love you too, even though that sounded like something you’d say on your bloody deathbed. I didn’t drag you to Ukraine to _kill_ you, Rachel.”

“It wasn’t because of that,” Rachel says quietly. “I just wanted you to know.”

“Well,” Sarah says. “I know.” She reaches across the space between them and folds her fingers with Rachel’s around the throttle. They sit there in silence, as the sky outside them sprouts treetops; the plane is touching down.

* * *

They land in an airport in Ivano-Frankivsk, wheels bumping against the concrete. Sarah looks about as ill as Rachel feels, as they bump along. “What,” she croaks as the plane slows to a stop, “your weird thorough training not cover landing?”

“Not in a plane I’ve never flown,” Rachel says distractedly as she lets the plane lose momentum. Then they’re stopped, and she unbuckles and stands, stretches. Next to her Sarah does the same; then she crosses the space between the two of them and kisses Rachel.

Rachel wasn’t expecting it. Sarah’s mouth is dry against hers, and tastes like old sleep. God, Rachel loves her. She closes her hand around Sarah’s bicep, as if Rachel were capable of holding her down. They should hurry out of the plane, they should leave the airport, they should go find Sarah’s sister so Sarah can stop carrying worry in the bones of her shoulders. But Rachel can’t bring herself to do any of those things, not when Sarah is here and making a soft sound against Rachel’s lips like she’s feeling a quiet cousin to dying.

Sarah breaks the kiss, presses her forehead against Rachel’s. Rachel’s hand is still wrapped around her arm. “Any particular reason for this,” she asks, voice breathier than she would have liked. “Not that I’m complaining, of course.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Sarah says. “Don’t want to do this alone.”

“You can’t fly a plane,” Rachel says with gentle mockery. “You really couldn’t do this alone.”

“Shut up,” Sarah says, huffing a laugh. She breaks contact; Rachel lets her hand slide off Sarah’s arm, her fingers hanging limply by her side. Sarah presses the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, sighs angrily before heading into the belly of the plane.

“Come on,” she yells, “let’s get our shit and finish this.”

* * *

By _finish this_ , of course, Sarah means _steal a car and drive north_. Rachel takes the passenger seat, closes her eyes and leans her head against the headrest. It’ll take about an hour and fifteen minutes according to her internal clock. Next to her Sarah drums her fingers on the wheel; the car screams as they go faster, faster, faster.

“If you get us in a car crash it’ll only make things worse,” Rachel says, voice strained. Sarah gulps a horrible sort of laugh, takes another turn. (Rachel’s thrown against the window and she swallows a small noise of pain.) “Helena drives faster,” she says. “We’d be _there_ already, if she was driving.” She sounds horribly frustrated.

“How did you meet her,” Rachel asks, in the hopes it will get Sarah to lift her foot slightly off the pedal.

“Thought that story would’ve spread,” Sarah says without menace. Rachel opens her eyes, a crack; Sarah’s hands are looser on the wheel, and the speedometer needle wavers lower. Thank goodness. Rachel closes her eyes again.

“I’ve heard several,” she says. “Would you like the one with werewolves, or the one with the Jell-O? Or you could ask Childs to tell you, she has an excellent one in iambic pentameter.”

“Bitch,” Sarah mutters, but there’s no sourness to it. “Also the one with the Jell-O’s true, trust me.” She sighs. “But it wasn’t anything – like that, I dunno. She was sent to kill me, and she – didn’t.”

“The angry angel,” Rachel says with an air of ceremony.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Six of our agents dead in Europe, and she just doesn’t kill me. Because we had a bloody connection.”

“She followed me home,” she says quietly. “Gave up everything, just because I was her family. Turned herself in, let them bloody – interrogate her, because she _trusted me_ to—”

There’s a thump that makes Rachel’s eyes fly open; but no, Sarah’s just slammed her hand against the steering wheel. “She _trusted me_ ,” she says again, “and I—”

“We should turn back,” Rachel says, and then frowns. That wasn’t what she’d meant to say. What she’d meant to say was _It’s not your fault._ She presses the pads of her fingers to her lips. They feel the same. She opens her mouth again. “We should turn back.” Looks at Sarah, wide-eyed. “We should turn back.”

“Rachel, what the hell,” Sarah says urgently. She can feel it, what Rachel can feel: that something is very, very wrong. The gears in her head are grinding, sending sparks across her vision. Nauseating non-colors, eldritch shapes. If she doesn’t report in right now she’s going to throw up. Her fingers ache.

“Don’t be alarmed,” she says through a strained throat, “keep driving.”

“What—” Sarah says, and then Rachel slams her head against the window and knocks herself out.


	3. the sound, the sound, the sound

Sarah almost swerves off the road, because there are a lot of things she’s prepared for but that is – definitely not one of them. Her first instinct, stupidly, is to laugh – everything about that moment is so far past ridiculous it doubles around and becomes ridiculous again. The other part of her wants to throw up. Rachel’s voice had been hollow, like a recorded voice. _Press 1 now. We should turn back._ Sarah doesn’t laugh; she just keeps driving, watches the speedometer needle tick up and up and up with her fear. She really, really would like Rachel to be present for this and not – whatever she is, now. Unconscious.

“ _Hivno_ ,” Sarah says, and then starts laughing over the wheel of the car. She keeps driving, on and on and on down the road. Until she sees a faded sign reading холодна річка, tucked away like a secret between the trees on either side of the cracked asphalt. She swerves that way. There’s a faded, beaten-down dirt road. The car takes the bumps like a champ…which is to say horribly. Rachel’s head sort of – bobs, limply, on her neck. Sarah pulls over to the side of the road, turns off the car. The sound of the engine cooling down is very very loud in the silence.

She’s just trying to figure out what to do with Rachel – there’s that rope, still, in her backpack, she _could_ – when the girl in question stirs, groans, scrunches her eyes closed very tightly and blinks them open.

“Rachel,” Sarah says cautiously.

“Well,” Rachel says, blinking rapidly, “that was…bracing.”

“If you have bloody brain damage I’m gonna – lose it,” Sarah says weakly.

“There’s no way to know,” Rachel says – it sounds cheerful, as cheerful as Rachel could ever get. She unbuckles her seatbelt, looks at Sarah. Her voice softens. “I’m fine. Cognitive recalibration.”

Sarah raises her eyebrows. She’s fairly certain her face matches her thoughts, which are: _what._

“I got hit in the head,” Rachel says dryly, and lets herself out of the car.

“My headache’s gone,” she says, pulling out knives from her backpack and shoving them into various pockets and slits in her jumpsuit. “I’m perfectly alright. We have larger problems.”

“Should be up that way,” Sarah says, nodding her chin towards the dirt road they’re adjacent to. She’s pulling out the promised guns and bombs. _Bless_ Cosima. “Dunno what it is, but it’s up there somewhere.”

“Shall we, then?” Rachel says, spinning a knife between her fingers and tucking it up her sleeves.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Let’s go burn it down.”

* * *

(Rachel lied.)

(her)

(head)

(hurts)

* * *

холодна річка turns out to be a dingy white building, shabby and buckling in on itself. The roof is dented with old rainstorms; it’s rusted. The whole building looks like a collapse.

“Underground,” Sarah says quietly; this place, in the middle of an otherwise-unbroken forest, has the hushed feeling of a church. A horrible church – the kind that takes sacrifice in blood, the kind that eats children alive and spits out—

“Yes,” Rachel says, and Sarah blinks herself back to awareness. They head towards the building, sticking close to cover. Tree shadows slide over Sarah’s skin; she can almost feel their weight, thick and syrupy and dark.

There’s no back door, because of course it couldn’t be that easy.

They circle back around to the front door. Small, shabby. Sarah stares at it, overwhelmed by the idea of people using this door – walking through it, chatting to each other on their way to their jobs. She wants to throw up, but god knows there’s been enough of that recently. Instead she just stands and stares at it. Part of her is waiting for Rachel to say something, but behind her Rachel is silent. She can hear the sound of the other girl’s breathing.

Sarah kicks in the door with her boot, flips a pistol into her hand. She’s just in time – some enormous security guard comes careening through the door, guns blazing. So they’re in the right place, at least. Sarah smacks him in the face with the pistol, so hard he keels back a step; when he does that she slams the heel of her boot into his kneecap. It makes a horrible crunching sound and he goes down. Sarah grabs him by his buzzcut, slams his head into the floor. He’s gone.

They go into the facility, silently. The whole place stinks like a hospital: antiseptic. It’s all stained white walls and the same tile from the previous building. There’s a rust-brown stain in the corner. Sarah doesn’t look at it. Instead she crouches down on the ground, starts feeling along the tile. Come on, she thinks. Trapdoor, trapdoor, trapdoor.

“You remember where this was in the last place?” Sarah asks over her shoulder.

“No,” Rachel says, unhelpfully. Sarah frowns at the floor – without Helena there ahead of them to open the place up, there’s no way to tell where it could be. She stands up in an easy movement, holsters her pistol, heads for the walls instead. Maybe there’s—

Oh. There’s an elevator in the back wall. Oops.

“You could’ve told me there was a bloody elevator,” Sarah tosses over her shoulder, heading for the walls. Behind her Rachel says: “Well,” the word almost amused. Sarah doesn’t focus on it, too busy looking at the doors. She could kick them open, probably. She wishes she’d kept the backpack – there’s probably some sort of jack in there, knowing Cosima. She looks at Rachel, standing behind her, hands hovering somewhere near the knives on her belt. _Well_.

Sarah presses the button on the elevator. Maybe if she’s lucky more guards will show up. She wants to fight the world, beat it to a bloody pulp.

Elevator dings.

“So?” Sarah says, stepping in. “You coming?”

* * *

The elevator doors open on a crowd, leaping towards the elevator like they’ve been waiting for it. Men and women, with the wide-eyed expressions of fanatics. Behind her there’s the slice-sound of metal flying through the air, and one of them falls with a knife in his forehead. Sarah’s busy ducking under someone’s poorly-aimed fists, lashing out with her own fists and feet and elbows, but she still finds the time to bark: “What the _hell_ , we don’t _kill_ anybody!”

( _I_ don’t kill anybody.)

(That’s Sarah’s first rule. Not unless she has to.)

(Maybe Rachel has – different rules.)

Another knife flies past her, skimming the side of her face. Sarah turns around and has half a word out, but someone shrieks something in Ukrainian – without the word _shit_ in it, Sarah knows that much – and she’s distracted. Her mind shifts gears, clicks into a fight. Shove here, hit there, punch kick get out of the bloody _elevator_ , Sarah. But by the time that thought’s made it through the machinery of her brain there’s no room to get out – just a wall of believers piled up to her chest. Throwing themselves at her and Rachel, fervent and wine-mad.

Eventually the air is silent. Sarah shoves her way through the unconscious bodies, out into the hallway. It’s nothing like the previous hallways: it’s all gleaming black metal, lit by lanterns set into the walls. It feels like it should be cold, but it’s not – the air is dry and warm as a desert, strange and disconcerting. It feels like one big coffin. Sarah hates it. If it wasn’t for the click of Rachel’s heels on the ground behind her, she’d tear her own hair out just for something that isn’t _this_.

The hallway forks, because of course it does. Left and right. Sarah stares at it, sways back and forth on the balls of her feet. They should split up, obviously, they have to split. But on the other hand, just as obvious: splitting up ends with everyone dead. Trust your partner. Don’t ever leave someone behind.

She should ask Rachel. _Wants_ to ask Rachel. But asking Rachel would mean looking at Rachel, and looking at Rachel would mean acknowledging that Rachel isn’t okay. That there’s something in Rachel’s brain cranking a handle, turning the gears of her mind in a direction Sarah doesn’t know. That Sarah fucked up, by bringing Rachel along. She can’t. Not now, not when they’re so close.

“I’m gonna take left,” she says, filling the ominous silence of the hall. Of course she’ll take left – Helena is left-handed, Sarah’s left-side mirror. And besides that: something in Sarah can _feel_ it, is yelling that left is the way to go. “You coming? Or you gonna take right?”

Rachel doesn’t answer, just heads down the other path. Her silhouette vanishes in the dark, like it’s being eaten alive. Oh god, oh shit, Sarah fucked up so bad. She doesn’t know how she’s going to get both of them out of here.

But Helena’s the priority right now, between the two. Helena has to be the priority. So Sarah steels herself, and heads down the left branch.

She shifts her pistol into her hand. Cocks it, and keeps walking.

* * *

She doesn’t remember where she is or why she’s there. Memories are eating themselves with an industrial efficiency; all she knows is this is not the mission, this is – this is the mission, this is not the mission, She doesn’t remember where she is or why she’s there. Memories are eating themselves with an industrial efficiency, the way they always have. Or. The way they probably always have.

A target launches themselves towards her – two knives, one in each hand. She pulls a pistol out of her belt and calmly fires. They fall. Eleven bullets left. Two extra magazines. Ten knives. Enough to finish the mission. this is the mission, this is not the mission,

She keeps walking, moving forward. Eventually she’ll remember. Or she’ll wipe out everyone in the building. Either way.

* * *

“You came,” Helena says when Sarah shoves open the door at the end of the hall. Her sister’s pressed up against the wire mesh of another cage, a bruise blooming purple across her face. She’s pale, twitchy, shaking – Sarah remembers the first month after Helena had joined them with a sort of urgent pain. She checks the room, spots no one, holsters her pistol and crosses it to kneel in front of the cage. Helena’s palms splay flat against the mesh; Sarah’s meet them, on the other side. Sarah tries to ignore the blood that’s drying into the creases of her own knuckles. It was a long trip, down that hallway.

“Yeah,” Sarah says, “I came. What did they _do_ to you, Helena?”

“They were angry,” Helena says distantly. “I called. You. Four nine five zero three.” As she talks her fingers fold down, so she’s holding the right numbers against Sarah’s hands. She stops, tilts her head to the side, says with a sort of curious wonder: “Hello.”

“Hey,” Sarah says, urgent and soft. “I’m gonna get you out of there, yeah?” Helena just nods, timid, like a scolded child. She scoots to the back of the cage and wraps her arms around her knees. Sarah finds the lock, debates finding a key, shoots it instead. Helena jumps and Sarah winces at that, but: the lock’s busted. She pulls it off frantically and yanks the door open.

Helena’s out of the cage before Sarah can finish opening it and then Sarah crushes her in a hug. Helena buries her face in Sarah’s shoulder and shudders, full-body; her hands grab at the fabric at Sarah’s back, like she’s looking for proof that Sarah is real. She’s breathing in horrible, gasping sobs, shaking like a leaf. Sarah makes shushing sounds, rubs circles in Helena’s back with the heel of her hand. They need to go. They need to go _right now_ , but Sarah’s sister was locked in a cage and now Sarah is holding her and they’re okay, again, Sarah could save Helena twice. She doesn’t want to let her go. Helena is shaking so bad and she smells like urine and Sarah still isn’t going to let her go.

“You’re alright,” Sarah says. “You’re alright, yeah? Listen to me. You’re alright, Helena.”

Helena’s nose digs into Sarah’s bones. Her shaking slows, stops. “We should go,” she says. “Sarah, they will be – angry. Very angry.”

Sarah closes her eyes, tight, hates the words that are coming out of her mouth but knows she has to say them anyways.

“Rachel’s down the other hallway. We’re not leaving without her.”

Helena goes still. “You brought Rachel,” she says woodenly.

“Couldn’t’ve made it without her,” Sarah says, and they finally break the hug. “But she’s not – she’s—” she breaks off, runs a frustrated hand through her hair. “Coming here wasn’t good for her.”

Helena stares at her with horrible dead eyes, blinks. Aliveness slithers across her eyes like a snakeskin, and then she looks – something close to fine. “Alright,” she says in a hollow voice. “We will go back for Rachel.” She holds out a hand. “Gun. Or knife. They did not give me guns, or knives.”

Sarah silently passes her a pistol, a knife, a few of Cosima’s slim little bombs. Helena slides them into different pockets on the outfit she’s wearing – all-black, so thin she’s shivering from the cold. Her feet are bare, pale and small on the floor like the things you pull out of seashells. Sarah’s going to rip someone apart with her bare hands.

“Come on,” Sarah says, “let’s go.”

They do.

* * *

They’re maybe fifty feet down the hallway when a man steps out of one of the side doors, clicks brass knuckles over his fists. He spits a couple syllables at Helena in Ukrainian. Sarah feels stupidly and inappropriately proud that she can recognize the word _hello_.

Helena stops in place, rattles off something fast and full of spiked syllables. She looks furious, looks anguished. Sarah knows both of those expressions on her own face so well it aches. The man steps closer. He points at Sarah, makes a flat slicing gesture with his hand; Helena shakes her head, frantically. Her left hand’s curled around one of Sarah’s pistols but it’s shaking. He steps closer. Helena steps back, just enough that she’s tucked behind Sarah. Sarah curls her fingers around one of her own guns, thinks _I don’t kill anybody_ —

A knife whizzes by her face. Sarah has just enough time to think a string of nasty words before a body slams into hers – heavier than she was expecting, heavier than the world. She smashes through a door, into a room she hadn’t noticed before. _Stand up_ , she thinks urgently, but god she thinks one of her ribs is broken. Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

The man steps into the room, huge and hulking and brass-knuckled. Sarah pulls herself to her feet, and gets ready for a fight.

* * *

The knife misses. Two of the targets have taken themselves out of her line of sight – maybe they’ll eliminate each other, that would save her time and lower the risk of injury – but there’s still one left, small and obviously not operating at full capacity. She hurls another knife, dead-center.

It explodes two feet from her target’s face. The shell of a small bomb drops to the floor between them. Her target turns around, stares at her. There’s a bruise across their face. It looks painful – good, she can focus on that as a weak point.

“Hello, Rachel,” they say. (Tired.) (Sad.) (Unnecessary information, but it filters through anyways.) “Long time no see.”

She doesn’t say anything. There’s no point to it.

“I did say we would fight, one day,” they say. They’re flicking a knife around and around in each hand – although they favor the left. So she’ll attack on the right. “This is not how I wanted to fight you, Rachel. You are not Rachel and I am only a little bit Helena. Sad.”

“But if you like,” they say, rocking onto the balls of their feet and tilting their head to one side. “I will fight you anyways.”

She smirks, on an impulse she doesn’t remember. Then she leaps.

* * *

Sarah crashes against the wall again; something against her belly goes _snap_ , and she lets out a hoarse shout of pain. The fists, she has to avoid the fists, gleaming gold and copper with her blood she has to _avoid_ them so she ducks low, rolls out of the way – hurts hurts hurts – gropes blindly for her pistol and fires. The man in front of her yells; she’s blown out his kneecap. Thank god for good aim, even with her vision gone all blurry from pain. She doesn’t know what to do. She’s not gonna win this by force but she can’t – she can’t, she _can’t_ kill him.

(One shot and she could end it. She can hear someone screaming outside, pitch uncomfortably close to her own and she could end it, right here—)

* * *

(A memory: a little girl, sitting at a kitchen table, swinging her legs. The chair’s too tall for her – her feet hang in empty space, not yet able to touch the ground.)

She punches her target directly in the bruise, sends them reeling backwards; they duck, somersault around, pop back up slam their elbow into the space between her ribs. She reaches for the bone of their forearm – break it, neutralize them – but they lunge forward and _bite_ her on her upper arm. Her grip loosens and they pull her finger so hard back it snaps. She lets go.

( _They said I could help people._

 _Are you sure that’s what you want, love?_ )

There’s fingers fisted in her hair, close to her scalp, and her attacker is starting to swing her towards the wall. She uses their momentum, ducks and _pulls_ and shoves them into the wall instead. Their heel crunches onto her toes – dirty fighting, not the way she was trained. Their head smacks backwards into hers, so hard her nose cracks and starts bleeding. She stumbles backwards, involuntarily.

(The smell of tea, the way it hangs in the air – the way it never does in reality, only in memory. The purest version of itself.)

A low, growling chuckle, and a fist wallops her in the stomach. She falls a step back, reaches for the knife in her belt. (One knife. Two pistols – empty. Low on supplies. Salvaging or improvising may be necessary.) Her attacker lunges for her again and she ducks, sweeps a leg out, knocks them to the ground.

( _Yeah. That’s what I want._

 _Can you promise me something, then?_ )

She pulls out her knife.

( _Try not to hurt them._ )

On the ground her target groans, reaches for a pocket feebly.

( _You mean like killing?_ )

She takes a step forward, flips the knife point-down. Throwing it at this distance wouldn’t be as effective as brute force. She tilts her head to the side, for a second, wondering. There’s something hollow and cold in the pit of her throat. She labels it _regret_ , and the corresponding feeling _surprise_. Curious.

( _Like killing._

 _…okay._ )

Facedown on the ground, her target makes a small chuckle. Heh.

( _Glad to hear it. How about one more cuppa before you leave, then?_

 _Okay._ )

They unfold their palm, like they’re offering a gift. Inside of it is a bomb. They hurl it in the air.

She watches the countdown flash, as the bomb spirals down towards the ground. Three – two – one—

* * *

He falls, bleeding. Sarah might have cracked his skull, but considering she has a seething mass of pain instead of a ribcage and can barely walk, she’s counting this as a victory. She props herself against the wall, watches the guy on the ground. Oh shit. Ooooh shit.

Sarah uses the wall to shove herself up to standing, totters out the door. In the hallway outside there’s two bodies – one face-down, one face-up. Sarah’s heart clenches, climbs up her throat, and flips over. She stumbles along the hallway, falls to her knees between them. The air smells like ash and charred bone.

Next to her the face-down body that can only be Helena stirs. “Be Sarah, please,” she says, her voice a husk.

“Hey,” Sarah says, voice stupidly teary. “You two talk it out?” She’s not looking at Rachel, won’t look at Rachel, can’t look at Rachel.

Helena wriggles an arm out from under her body, uses it to push herself up. It looks like a horrible, painful effort. She waggles a finger at Sarah, dazedly. “I did not kill your girlfriend,” she slurs. “She was not as nice to me, though.” She collapses back down on her face.

Sarah looks at Rachel. There’s blood all over her face, and it looks like some of her bones might be broken. But – she’s breathing. Sarah holds her hands over her face, refolds her legs so she’s sitting cross-legged. She wants to sleep for fifty years. No, a hundred. “I didn’t kill—” she gestures vaguely behind them, towards the enormous man dreaming in the room with the splintered door.

“Tomas,” Helena offers helpfully. “Let me up, I will kill him.”

“No,” Sarah says. “We’re leaving.”

They don’t leave.

“Does this mean we will stand up,” Helena says to the floor.

“Yeah,” Sarah says.

They don’t stand up.

“We could nap,” Helena says hopefully.

Sarah hears the clatter of footsteps and another torrent of what she’s assuming is horrible filth. Helena yells _fuck off_ in Ukrainian, which are two more words that Sarah knows. Then there’s a thump and the sound of a body falling. Sarah looks behind her – Helena’s thrown her pistol, so hard it hit the guy in the head. He’s fallen to the ground.

“I changed my mind,” Helena says. “We should go now.”

On the ground next to them Rachel groans; her fingers twitch.

“Good idea,” Sarah says.


	4. when we come running

Rachel wakes up sitting in an elevator with her fingers, toes, face, and head aching. She tilts her head up to look around the elevator. Sarah’s leaned up against the wall, face a sort of nasty grayish color with pain. Next to her: Helena, looking horribly bruised but otherwise not too worse for wear.

“Excellent,” Rachel says – her voice is nasally, nose clogged with blood – “you found her.” She reaches up, brushes delicate fingers across her nose and hisses in pain. “What happened here?”

“Me,” Helena says. She widens her eyes and blinks, like a shocked owl.

“You don’t remember,” Sarah says. She looks over at Rachel, waiting for her to confirm.

“I may have lied, about the lack of headache,” Rachel says apologetically.

Helena clicks her tongue against her teeth. “You,” she says, “were not helpful.”

“Shut up,” Sarah says. “Both of you just – shut up.” Helena’s mouth claps shut so fast it makes an audible sound. She looks at Sarah. Rachel takes the opportunity to slide to her feet; she can put weight on her left foot, painful but possible. She wishes she could remember. She wishes, for one of the first times, that she could remember everything. Everything that had ever happened to her. What might that be _like_.

The elevator dings. Helena perks up. “We can burn it,” she says. “There is gas-o-line in the back room.”

“We’re not burning it,” Sarah says. “We’re leaving, and we’re never coming back.”

Helena frowns at her. “They will know that you came for me,” she says in a slow voice – like explaining logic to a child. “They will fight you.”

“If we burn down the facility the forest will burn,” Rachel says. “You may as well send up a beacon.” She closes her eyes, rests her head against the wall. She is so very sick of her head hurting.

“Let’s just report back,” Sarah says, something wry in her voice. Rachel opens her eyes, looks at her. Sarah’s smirking, a little, despite the pain in her face. Maybe she can feel it: that Rachel’s headache is gone.

* * *

Helena – who is, ironically, the least injured – drives them back; back to the closest base, that is, which is unfortunately Warsaw. It’ll take at least eight hours. Helena seems determined to make it in two.

Helena’s made Sarah a rudimentary rib-wrap out of three seat belts and her own belt and Sarah’s strapped up in the backseat, head lolling against the window as she sleeps. Rachel sits in the passenger seat, occasionally dry-heaving. Sarah exaggerated nothing about how fast Helena drives.

“What did they do to you?” Helena asks conversationally, ten minutes into the drive. Rachel blinks, says flatly: “Excuse me.”

“I fought you,” Helena says, “at Cold River. You were not there. Poof! Like a candle. You were made like this, I think. You do not forget how to be yourself unless someone teaches you.”

Rachel stares at Helena, but she’s staring at the road. Her fingers drum restlessly on the steering wheel; separated from context, they look like Sarah’s. Rachel turns to look out her own window instead, sees the nauseating blur of the surrounding scenery, decides to stare fixedly at the glovebox.

“I don’t know,” she says easily. “I don’t recall.”

“Mm,” Helena says. “Like not remembering the answer on a test? Or like a hole.”

Rachel’s lips part, but she stays silent. The silence is an answer in and of itself.

“You know,” Helena says, “they are all the same. The man holding your leash, and the man who held mine.” She yanks the steering wheel and they go squealing around a curve; Sarah’s too tightly cocooned to move, but Rachel slams into the window. _Again_. “They say that they want to help, but they just want to piss on a tree and say it is theirs. They do not care, the way it smells.” She smirks at her own metaphor, as if it wasn’t completely incomprehensible.

“…and,” Rachel says.

“They broke you,” Helena says. “Like they broke me. They smashed your brain with a hammer and put it back together in a pretty shape. Like – mm, mo-sa-ic. But you are also shattered glass. We are both shattered.”

 _I’m not,_ Rachel thinks, like a liar. Not even a _good_ liar. She stares at her hands, folded on her lap. Her nail polish isn’t even chipped.

“If they’re all the same,” she says quietly, “why change sides? Why not cut your losses and run, somewhere they couldn’t find you?”

Helena shrugs a shoulder. “Family,” she says.

The car screams around another bend, and Rachel numbly watches the edge of a cliff as they don’t go over it. The drop down below is enormous, a great empty chasm.

 _Family_ , Rachel thinks, and then they’re back on the road.

* * *

Sarah wakes up in the medical bay, staring at the same ceiling she’s woken up staring at too many times to count. The good news is: she can’t feel any pain. The bad news is: she can’t really feel anything. She struggles to a sitting position, blinks woozily around the room. If they made it back here that probably means Helena and Rachel didn’t kill each other, so that’s good. She has no idea how she managed to be unconscious for the entire flight back to base, though.

There’s a crisp knock on the door and Sarah says “Yeah” with a voice that’s rusty from disuse.

The door slides open. Alison’s standing there, her lips pressed tight into a sort of sour frown. Shit. Sarah lets her head thump back against the headboard, sighs.

“Hey,” she says in the vague direction of the ceiling.

“You’ll recover,” Alison says crisply. Sarah risks a glance down – she’s not looking at Sarah either. Sarah looks back up at the ceiling, listens to Alison go over her chart. “You’ll be here for a day or two while we keep an eye on you and then you’ll be free to go!”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” Sarah says, voice tight.

Alison drops the facade and makes a single hysterical laugh, almost eerie in isolation. “You didn’t want me to _worry!_ ” she says, the hand not holding Sarah’s chart flying frantically around her face – fingers tucked up against her chin, flung out into the space between them. “Sarah, who do you think got – _interrogated_ after you left! When was the last time I’d seen you, did I know you’d made plans, where did I think you’d _gone_ , and me standing here not even knowing that you’d _left_ —” The both of them can hear her voice wavering and she stops, swallows, tucks her fingers under her chin again. They look at each other. Sarah winces, apologetically.

“Fine,” she says. “You want the truth? If I’d said anything, you would’ve tried to stop me. And I didn’t want to have to bloody _fight_ you, Alison.”

“Did you ever think that maybe you should have been stopped!” Alison says shrilly. She stops, looks about two seconds away from clapping her hand over her mouth. They both stare at each other, let that silence hang.

“No,” Sarah says quietly. “I didn’t.”

“I didn’t mean—” Alison says, looking stricken. She sighs, sharp and through her teeth. “I just think you should have let the higher-ups decide! That’s what they’re _for!_ To make difficult decisions that maybe shouldn’t be made by you and _Rachel_ at—” she lets out a breathy, horrified laugh, “two in the morning!”

“So, what,” Sarah says, “should’ve sat on my hands, then, trusted the grown-ups to sort it? Waited a month for them to put together a team and what – _hope_ they’d find the right place? _Hope_ they’d get her out?”

“ _We_ got her out,” she continues tightly. “And it took a bloody _week_ , Alison. _Less_. No casualties on our side. It was stupid, yeah, but it _worked_.”

“It was a stupid decision,” Alison says tightly. “Reckless, and – and poorly-planned, and… _stupid_. You could have cost the agency two of its best agents.”

“You could have cost _me_ —” she continues, “all of us—” and she sniffles, turns away from the bed. Sarah can sense a hasty Alison exit, running away from her own problems, and so she sighs and says: “C’mere, sit on the bed so I don’t have to crane my bloody neck to look at you.”

“You shouldn’t be looking at anything,” Alison says, passing the back of her hand under her nose to furtively wipe up snot, “you should be resting.”

“Alison,” Sarah says, “how many times’ve I been in the bloody hospital wing.”

“A hundred and twelve,” Alison says tearily, obligingly sitting down on Sarah’s hospital bed.

Sarah blinks. Shit.

“Or at least,” Alison says, gaining a little bit of speed, “that’s how many it’s been since I started keeping track.”

Sarah nobly decides she’s just going to let that go; she manages to twist enough so she can get her hand on Alison’s knee, deliver a couple brusque but soothing pats. “Have I ever stayed in the hospital bed,” she says, “any of those – uh – hundred and twelve times.”

“Once,” Alison says. “But you were strapped down.”

 _Okay_ , this is veering off-track. Sarah wrestles the conversation back onto the road, says: “I can’t promise I’m not going to do anything stupid again, yeah? You know me, I’m stupid. I do stupid shit.” Alison gives a damp little laugh. She knows. Sarah leans forward enough to bump Alison’s shoulder, continues: “Next time I’ll tell you first, though.”

“Oh good!” Alison says. “So next time you want me to _lie_ to the agents who come looking for you.” She’s smiling, though. Just a little bit, but she’s smiling.

“Yeah, that’d be great,” Sarah says. “Tell ‘em I went to Switzerland. Helena ate my chocolate, I need more.”

“I’ll do that,” Alison says. They smile at each other for a second, and then Alison points sternly at Sarah and says: “If you think this means I’m letting you out early, you’re _very_ wrong.”

Sarah groans. “We just – bonded or something, yeah? I can walk, Alison, I’m _fine_.”

“I’ve been poking your lower leg for the past minute and a half,” Alison says serenely, “and you haven’t responded to it.”

Sarah opens her mouth. Closes it. Okay, she might not be able to feel her legs. Damn Alison, and her need to actually follow the rules. “I don’t need to walk,” she says weakly but Alison gives a little huff and stands up from the bed, completely ignoring her.

“A day!” she chirps on her way out the door. “At least!” Sarah groans louder and more angrily in the hopes it’ll be convincing – like it’s been anything resembling convincing, the last hundred and twelve times.

This time Alison skids to a halt on her way out the door and turns around, her fingers curled around the doorframe. “Oh, Sarah?” she says. Smiles. “It’s good to have you back.” And then she’s gone.

Sarah just has enough time to thunk her head against the headboard despairingly before the air vent grate starts rattling. It falls to the floor and then Helena’s head pops out, face still bruised. She waggles her eyebrows at Sarah and then yanks herself out of the grate. She’s holding a backpack.

“Thank god,” Sarah says, “this a prison break?”

“No,” Helena says serenely. She holds up the backpack. “I have movies. I want to see what happens when Stitch has a glitch.”

Sarah mutters to herself bitterly about betrayal and bed rest but scoots over in the bed enough for Helena to cram herself in and balance her laptop on her folded legs. Helena bumps her shoulder against Sarah’s happily, settles in.

“Pass the food,” Sarah says, “know you got some.”

“Where is your please-and-thank-you,” Helena says, but hands Sarah the backpack. Sarah looks into it, sees a rainbow of candy packages, and rummages through it until she finds a bag of Warheads. Helena sticks her tongue out but allows the thievery.

The title screen loads on Helena’s computer and she burrows in closer to Sarah’s shoulder. Sarah pops a piece of candy in her mouth and considers the picture: her sister here, the both of them alive and (relatively) unharmed. When Helena senses Sarah’s looking at her she squirms, tilts her head to side-eye Sarah.

“You are staring,” she says.

“Sorry,” Sarah says. “Just good to be home.”

Helena rolls her eyes, bemusedly, before leaning forward and pressing “play.”

* * *

>Helena Manning  
_helenas asleep and i stole her phone come break me out of here_

>  
_Omw._

>Helena Manning  
_rachel what does that even MEAADDSDSDSSSSSSDFBSDK_

>  
_On my way. Also: ?_

>Helena Manning  
_YOU DO NOT NEED TO COME VISIT, WE ARE FINE WITHOUT YOU._

>  
_Give the phone back pls Helena._

>Helena Manning  


>Helena Manning  
_WILL LILO HAVE HER HULA DANCE? WE WILL NEVER KNOW BECAUSE RACHEL WILL RUIN EVERYTHJKLKLhurry please DO NOT HURRY! TAKE YOUR T_

>Helena Manning  
_PLEASE HURRY. SARAH IS ON THE FLOOR NOW BUT IT WAS AN ACCIDENT AND SHE WILL BE FINE._

>  
_U r lucky_ _I didnt listen to u b4._

>Helena Manning  
_THERE WILL BE TIME FOR SCOLDINGS LATER!!! HURRY BEFORE ALISON COMES TO GIVE THE DISAPPOINTED FACE AND_ _NOT BAKE CAKES!!_

>  
_Im outside._ _Open the door._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rachel and helena get into a bitchy slapfight over sarah's hospital bed and they are both kicked out of the hospital wing
> 
> helena is actually permanently banned from the hospital wing, which is why she snuck in through the air vent

**Author's Note:**

> Headed for the open door  
> Tell me what you're waiting for
> 
> Never go where we belong  
> Echoes in the dead of dawn  
> Soon they're gonna know  
> The sound, the sound, the sound  
> When we come running  
> \--"We Come Running," Youngblood Hawke 
> 
> (Other soundtrack for this fic: [Shots (Boiler Remix)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcHJtgljXEo) by Imagine Dragons.)
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you liked! :D


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